Lack of media coverage concerns some quake-hit Kumamoto areas

Fumio Watanabe, 73, gazes at his damaged home in the town of Misato, Kumamoto Prefecture. "We can't live here anymore," he says. | JIJI

JIJI

Sep 2, 2026

Kumamoto – While a shopping mall explosion and areas struggling with water outages following a massive earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture in late July have made major headlines, people in some quake-affected areas in the prefecture are concerned about the lack of media coverage on their experiences.

There have been differences among areas in terms of the amount of donations collected under the furusato nōzei tax program and in the number of disaster relief volunteers who came in, officials said.

Thirty-eight people have died in the July 28 earthquake, according to the Kumamoto prefectural government. Of them, nine were killed after a chimney collapsed at a paper plant in the city of Yatsushiro and seven in the shopping mall explosion in the town of Kashima.

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